"Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless."
What does man gain from all his labour at which he toils under the sun?
Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Sketches of a Mind - Communication & A Changing God

We seem to be quite a hard species to communicate, we certainly have enough problems occur within our species due to communication failure. Following this sort of line of thought I was thinking about how God has attempted to communicate with us some many times and how so many times it has failed miserably due in most cases to humans losing interest or going off to do there own thing.

Any way here are some of what I think are different methods the bible portrays God using to communicate with us through out history, in a rough sort of chronological order.

God the Immortal Farther: Walking with us, teaching us, showing humans this world. Problem being first time he goes on "holiday" or something and stops paying attention for a little bit what do you know? People have started doing stuff he suggested was a bad idea forgotten the message!

Distant, Wrathful, Almighty God: Resetting the world (perhaps?) because only one chap will listen and things have deteriorated to a point It can't stand! Chosen people/family's tested to see if they're worthy and truly follow It. Third party non-human messengers and so forth, a God who seems at home in Myth and Legend. Seemed to work fine for small groups of people or individuals, but didn't seem to scale up.

Classical Mythical God: Chosen leaders, hero's and nations. Miracles Pillars of fire, rescuing and creating an entire nation. Establishment of structured religion, High Priests, Sacrifices. Punishing those who stuff up or turn from them, and those who oppose It's chosen people and nations. Unfortunately doesn't seem to work very well at all even while the miracles are happening people turn away or want more.

Prophetic God: Prophets and Prophetic Kings, divinely appointed leaders, direct but less flashy miracles, working through the Prophets. The established religion supports and follows the prophets. Cycles of punishment and intervention announced and guided by the Prophets. People connect with the prophets they may not like the messages but they understand them and follow them while the prophet survives. Slowly gets less and less effective though until only a few people accept and follow the prophets.

Distant God V1: Steps back from human affairs reduces intervention lets people cope for them selves. Suddenly some people realise that some things missing and fall back to the Established religion, placing greater and greater importance on it. Eventually though the religion becomes to established, less about God and more about the man made rules, laws, tradition and appearance.

Human God: The next/final step up from Prophets. Christ. God becomes human, takes human form. God living with us experiencing what we are, eating, drinking, sleeping and ageing with us. Eventually dieing for us. Humanity fully embraced, Mortality experienced the uncertainty of human existence comprehended and the uncertainty of what comes after! A tragedy of miscommunication finally understandable in human terms. Something that reaches out and touches the human "soul" in a manner that we can comprehend. This provides a personal human faith, a real flesh and blood being we empathise with, comprehend to a degree, someone we can seek to understand, to follow, to love and believe in. Promises that it isn't the end that there is hope for a future.

Distant Loving God V2: The message delivered in an understandable form, allow it to remain a human faith something people hold to as a matter of faith and belief. Reduces the temptation for humans to blame every thing on God and seek God to do every thing. Waiting till the promised time when humans have truly understood the message.

The Future what comes next?The End?Another form and stage should humans forget the current one?

What do people think?Do you agree disagree with this sort of series of views of God?